BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been freed after nearly four months in captivity. He was held by the Army of Islam, a small radical Islamist group in the Palestinian city. At a press conference in Jerusalem, Johnston described his captors as "unpredictable and dangerous," and his ordeal as terrifying.
A veteran BBC reporter based in Gaza, Johnston was handed over to Hamas leaders in Gaza early Wednesday by his captors. In Jerusalem, looking tired and relieved, Johnston stood in the sunshine he was deprived of during his three months of solitary confinement in a dingy Gaza apartment.
"It was, as you can imagine, the most appalling experience." Johnston said, "Like being buried alive — removed from life — and sometimes, occasionally, quite terrifying, and always frightening, in that I just didn't know when it would end, or how it would end."
His Islamic Army captors held "the darkest view" of everyone in the West, Johnston said, and were a horrible aberration from the hospitality and warmth he'd experienced from ordinary Palestinians during his three years of living in Gaza.
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